Excerpt from Responsibility: A NovelEngland, formalities, and release. I am unfit for further service, without scars to show, returnable to civil life at forty-nine and with liberty to wring out of the world whatever entertainment or what further bitterness it yet may hold. My chief feeling is that I must be good for effort yet, that life cannot be over. There is atonement to be made, an atonement non cloistral, giving scope for effort. I have little patience with those natural heartaches to which the most innocent ¿esh is heir, the unmerited sufferings that are a part of normal inheritance. My sympathies are with the man who has only himself and not Providence to blame, with the well-meaning blackguard, the rascal who has found it easier to deceive the world than to silence the promptings of his better nature. It is twenty years since I sat under parson, but the worn phrases die hard. Jargon sticks like a burr.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.